XPO - Firebird 3.0 Server and other new DB feature Support

As you may already know, XPO (our object-relational mapping library) supports more than a dozen database engines (including SQL Server, Oracle and various Open Source products). As part of our ongoing commitment to support the needs of those using XPO, we've updated it with the following database specific features:

Firebird

In addition to SQL Server, MySql, PostgreSQL and SQLite, XPO for .NET Core / .NET Standard 2.0 supports ADO.NET provider 5.11+ for Firebird starting with v17.2.5. As we noted in our introductory post, the lack of support for other providers is not an XPO limitation - as soon as RDBMS vendors begin supporting .NET Standard 2.0, we will test XPO with these RDBMS providers and add them to our supported list.

XPO currently supports Npgsql versions up to v2.0.11, and the runtime System.Guid type maps to the CHAR(36) column. The Npgsql library supports the UUID column type, a more natural solution for a primary key, starting with v3.1.0. XPO support for this latest Npgsql version and its features is available in v18.1. If you do not want to migrate your existing database, set the static PostgreSqlConnectionProvider.GlobalUseLegacyGuidSupport flag to True to inform XPO that System.Guid properties should be mapped to CHAR(36) as before.

Support for Oracle 12c (both 12.1 and 12.2) version is available starting with v17.2.3.

SQL Anywhere

We have added support for fetching of table lists from the ASA database in v18.1 (it requires special privileges for the query). This was helpful for a specific Report Server scenario. Did you know that various DevExpress products besides XAF use XPO core features for data access?

What do you think of the features above? Have you built XPO apps on the .NET Core platform so far? As always, we will be more than happy to provide v18.1 early access preview builds to users who want to ensure that we have covered their needs in the best possible way. Contact me at dennis@devexpress.com or use the https://www.devexpress.com/ask service.

Guess the next XPO feature!

We are finishing work on a cool and popular user request for v18.1. If you are an XPO fan like me, can you guess its name? Tip: the name contains 'NULL'. I am looking forward to hearing from you in comments!

@Brendon: Yes. There will be new attributes to better control whether a column accepts nulls or its default value. The ORM Data Model Wizard will support this too.

16 March, 2018

Brendon Muck [DevExpress MVP]

That's good news. I know that is something that has been requested for years and will be useful to a lot of users.

16 March, 2018

Dietmar-Konrad Kurok

Oracle has now a beta of the .NET Core provider. Did you start testing XPO for Core with it? Some release-planning?

Oracle themself will come very late with EF-support (first beta end of 3rd quarter 2018); so if XPO supports the .COre provider from Oracle, this would be great! and early!

22 March, 2018

Dennis (DevExpress Support)

@Dietmar: Thank you for your interest. While we have not yet started testing a pre-release version of the Oracle ADO.NET provider, we will take your request into account. Once we support new database engines for .NET Core, we will surely inform our users via this blog and other channels.

23 March, 2018

mukhlim taqun

hope there will be an option to specify "CASCADE" behavior in collection property

26 March, 2018

Dennis (DevExpress Support)

@mukhlim taqun: Would you please describe your use-case scenario and problem with it in greater detail?

27 March, 2018

Reinhold Erlacher

will there be an Option to set postgresql Provider to caseinsensitive (like) when using database on windows?

30 March, 2018

XPO Team Blog

Many times, customers have asked us how we use XPO – or if we even do it at all. We decided to sit down with developers working on and with XPO and conduct an interview, with the goal of answering the most common questions. The result makes for an interesting